ovided sources
of electrical energy vastly superior to any before extant in power,
and far more convenient for use.

It is perhaps this branch of physical science which may claim the palm
for its practical fruits, no less than for the aid which it has
furnished to the investigation of other parts of the field of physical
science. The idea of the practicability of establishing a
communication between distant points, by means of electricity, could
hardly fail to have simmered in the minds of ingenious men since,
well nigh a century ago, experimental proof was given that electric
disturbances could be propagated through a wire twelve thousand feet
long. Various methods of carrying the suggestion into practice had
been carried out with some degree of success; but the system of
electric telegraphy, which, at the present time, brings all parts of
the civilised world within a few minutes of one another, originated
only about the commencement of the epoch under consideration. In its
influence on the course of human affairs, this invention takes its
place beside that of gunpowder, which tended to abolish the physical
inequalities of fighting men; of printing, which tended to destroy the
effect of inequalities in wealth among learning men; of steam
transport, which has done the like for travelling men. All these gifts
of science are aids in the process of levelling up; of removing the
ignorant and baneful prejudices of nation against nation, province
against province, and class against class; of assuring that social
order which is the foundation of progress, which has redeemed Europe
from barbarism, and against which one is glad to think that those who,
in our time, are employing themselves in fanning the embers of ancient
wrong, in setting class against class, and in trying to tear asunder
the existing bonds of unity, are undertaking a futile struggle. The
telephone is only second in practical importance to the electric
telegraph. Invented, as it were, only the other day, it has already
taken its place as an appliance of daily life. Sixty years ago, the
extraction of metals from their solutions, by the electric current,
was simply a highly interesting scientific fact. At the present day,
the galvano-plastic art is a great industry; and, in combination with
photography, promises to be of endless service in the arts. Electric
lighting is another great gift of science to civilisation, the
practical effects of which have not yet be